RATING: /5 SPOONS

My foray into Melbourne cuisine continued with a rare visit to Dinner By Heston in the Crown Towers.

We were lucky enough to be able to reserve a table here 2 days prior to our dinner (but be warned to try and book early)! Also, don’t forget to ask for a window seat as you get gorgeous Melbourne city views and get to experience the fire show that happens on Southbank river every hour.

Upon entering, you are greeted with the below dinner sign, a nice touch, setting the mood for dinner.

1. Food

I absolutely loved that you are able to select a variety of dishes and aren’t made to sit through a certain amount of courses. We were able to order 3 entrees, 1 main and 2 desserts!

Of course we started with the iconic meat fruit. The dish includes: mandarin, chicken liver parfait and grilled bread (leaves not edible). Absolutely amazing. As someone who doesn’t eat pate often, I was slightly hesitant to see if it lived up to the rave reviews it had received but I absolutely loveeeed this, and highly recommend it. Since we were sharing the dish, the waiters noticed we had quickly gone through the bread and hurriedly brought us some more (love the attention to detail at Heston’s).

Next, we had the Frumenty entree. This dish is made up of Grilled octopus, spelt, pickled red moss, lovage emulsion & smoked sea broth. The broth and emulsion add such a great level of depth to this entree. So many different layers of flavour and this dish and absolutely gorgeous.

Our last entree was the Sherried Maron, which is made up of: Maron, prawn tartare, grilled shiitake & Sherry mushroom broth. My friend and I were stuck on which dish we loved more (Mine the octopus, hers the Maron). Again, the Maron entree had so much flavour and the complexity of the dish is obvious once you taste it. A delicious dish!

Overall, three great entrees!

We were more keen on the entrees than the mains and so we only ordered the one to share.

The Powdered Duck with duck hearts was a special and so doesn’t appear on the menu. It was beautiful and tender (but we still preferred the entrees more). The portion in the image is the normal size of a main split in two. The restaurant kindly split the main for us on two dishes before bringing it to the table (Again, not something we had asked them to do, but a lovely touch to show their brilliant service).

The Triple Cooked Chips were very unique. Heston invented the dish in 1995 and so is a signature of his. The chips were extremely crunchy and delicious, slightly oily though.

2. Dessert

We were incredibly excited for the desserts as we had heard a lot!

Starting off with that famous blue egg dessert, the Verjus in Egg. The egg itself contains verbena and coconut pannacotta, coffee parfait and verjuice. The egg is encased in a shell of white chocolate that sits on katafi. Wow! What an experience! Absolutely enjoyed this. We did not expect the centre to resemble a soft boiled egg but it just goes to show the attention of detail Heston puts in his recipes. We later found out that the version made in Australia is a simpler version than that made in Heston’s UK restaurants!! This was delicious.

The second dessert we tried was the famous Tipsy Cake.

Another absolutely gorgeous dessert. The tipsy cake involves a spit roast pineapple that is visible upon entering the restaurant, it adds a lot to the atmosphere of the kitchen as it is such a unique sight. The pineapple itself is delicious but the cake is a winner.

Overall

Greatly enjoyed our experience at Heston’s in Melbourne. Not only was the food delicious, this was one of the best fine dining experiences i’ve ever had because of how warm all the staff were to us and their level to attention to detail of anything we needed. It created for an amazing experience.